


Look around, look around at how lucky we are to be alive right now

by lisachan



Series: Leoverse [298]
Category: Glee
Genre: Alternate Universe, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-12
Updated: 2021-02-12
Packaged: 2021-03-12 08:40:05
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,670
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29382186
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lisachan/pseuds/lisachan
Summary: Tomorrow, Leo's going to war, to fight for freedom with the rest of the rebels.
Relationships: Original Male Character/Original Male Character
Series: Leoverse [298]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/30541
Collections: COWT - Clash Of the Writing Titans/Chronicles Of Words and Trials





	Look around, look around at how lucky we are to be alive right now

**Author's Note:**

> **WARNING:** This story is an **AU** from the original 'verse. What happens in here has little to none correlation with what happens in Leonard Karofsky-Hummel VS The world or Broken Heart Syndrome. The characters involved are (mostly) the same, but situations and relationships between them may be completely different.

Leo doesn’t know much about war. He knows nothing of it, actually, beside what he studied in school and read about in books. He knows that war is a messy affair, scary and bloody and violent. He knows it can be righteous but it’s almost never right. And he knows that the one they’re fighting is no different in that: it’s necessary violence but it is still violence. And people are going to die, some of them closer to Leo than he ever thought could happen.

All his life, the idea of war, the very concept of it, was a distant thought, something fictional, even. War was something past that could be narrated but no one expected to live through, not ever.

But then he met Blaine, and Blaine brought him to Cody, and Cody made it necessary to change things, for his sake, and then Adam showed him how. And suddenly war was not just a story any longer, it was an answer. An ugly, inevitable answer that no one wanted to give but someone _had_ to give anyway. A response to years of inequality, bullying and abuse, a response that had to be as violent as the way all oppressed people had been treated through the years by the United States government.

Some answers, Leo thinks, can be whispered. Some others can be spoken in a low but clear and firm voice. And some other, well, some other must be yelled.

This is their yell. These bombs that Annie and her girls are arming, these bombs they’re storing in the back of the trucks that they will drive into the city tomorrow morning, these are their yell.

People are calling them the Dynamite Girls, and they’re loving it. Annie wants t-shirts, she’s already asked Adam for it over dinner. She’s excited and he’s exhausted. Leo will never say it out loud, but he appreciated the fact that Adam made an effort to smile at her while she asked for such a trivial thing in the midst of the most nerve-wracking preparations he surely had to bear in his whole life. “We’ll see about that,” he said, “When we conquer the city.” Something else Leo appreciated: he left no room for doubt in his words. No _if_ s. Only _when_ s.

But he was tired. Their general, their tireless leader, this guy Leo just loves to hate, is at the end of his personal rope. If things don’t go the way he wants them to go, tomorrow, Leo’s not sure what’s gonna happen. To him, or to the rest of them, for that matter. He doesn’t want to think about it. 

He hasn’t felt much understanding towards Adam, since he found him again. He’s become obnoxious and much too perfect to be tolerated, really, but he doesn’t envy him now. He’s feeling the weight of this war on his shoulders, he’s carrying it all with a smile, and that’s just yet another thing that makes him even more perfect, even more unbearable, but still. It calls for some sympathy. And Leo won’t speak it in words to him, but he chooses not to be mean, tonight, he chooses to avoid nasty remarks and petty comments. So, when Adam announces he’s going to sleep, he doesn’t mock him about the lack of inspirational speeches to rouse the troops in anticipation of tomorrow’s battle. He doesn’t push him for wanting to isolate himself right before such a momentous occasion.

He just lets him go. Lets him have his quiet night’s sleep. He deserves it, after all.

He goes to bed minutes after Adam left. He’s unsettled and nervous, he doesn’t know if he’s exactly scared, yet, but he can already tell he will be tomorrow. When he hops on one of those trucks, when he drives into the city, knowing perfectly well he might die, could die, will probably die, he will be scared. But that’s tomorrow, not tonight, apparently. Tonight he enjoys this. The thrill, the anticipation. He walks through the empty hallways of the underground bunker they’re all holed up in, leading up to his room, and he feels the walls, and he feels the silence, and he feels good.

His room waits for him as he left him this morning, untouched. Blaine’s not here, tonight, he had preparations to make for their arrival in the city. He didn’t tell him much about it, but he was confident and relaxed, and Leo’s not worried about him. He knows he will see him in the city. He knows he will see him on the battlefield. He knows they will be together until the end, however it will go, and the thought gives him peace. What he feels for Blaine comforts him like no other love. Even when he feels unsettled and preoccupied the most, one look at that man pacifies him. And he’s eagerly anticipating the moment he will lay his eyes on him while they fight, tomorrow, because he knows in that moment he will be calm, and he will fight well, just because his soul will be still, it will be sure and true, and that will be thanks to Blaine’s iron will, conveyed to him through his eyes.

As Leo lies down on his bed, there’s just one thing he’s sad about, and it’s that he won’t see Cody before tomorrow. He would have loved to spend the night with him, with this incredible, strong, beautiful, unyielding boy that’s the very reason why they are all fighting. Because it’s true – these people fight for their own rights, and Leo’s no exception, at this point, but the real reason why they will go into battle tomorrow is because Adam will be leading them to it. And the only reason why Adam will do that, is Cody. And so, they’re all fighting for Cody, in a way. Leo just a little bit more than all the others.

He would love to spend the night with Cody, truly. He would love to spend all his waking and sleeping moments with Cody. But Cody’s priority tonight must be Adam, there’s no way around it. He already gravitates around him all the time, a pale moon to his spectacular sun, but tonight of all nights Leo’s sure Cody will think of nothing else. Be with Adam, bask in his light, charge up on his energy as he waits for tomorrow to come. Cody will be fighting too, tomorrow, he will conquer the city by their side, and he will work upon that battery that only Adam can recharge.

Leo hates it. Truly, unforgivingly. The fact that he must bear it doesn’t make it any less of a cross.

And so he settles down on the bed, and he closes his eyes, and he tries to sleep. And then he hears soft steps walking closer to him, naked feet on the cement floor, and he opens his eyes, and Cody’s standing next to his bed, and he looks nothing short of a vision. Leo swallows, propping himself up on his elbows. “Hey,” he says softly. The air barely moves around them.

Cody climbs on the bed, kneeling next to him. His legs are naked, and they look so smooth and soft. Leo follows something that feels like an innate instinct and touches them, stroking his skin affectionately – no, adoringly. That’s the feeling Cody really inspires him. Adoration. 

“Hi,” Cody says. His voice sounds small. His voice almost never sounds small. It’s sweet. “I couldn’t sleep.”

“I thought you’d be at Adam’s.”

Cody looks down, thinking about it for a second. “You know what? I always thought I would too. I mean… I imagined this night for years. The night before our first battle, I mean. I’ve wanted this for so long, dreamed about it so often… and every time I pictured it, I always thought I’d spend the night before it with him. Seemed just… natural, you know?”

Leo swallows. As always, hearing Cody speak about Adam like this hurts him in unspeakable ways.

“So what changed?” he asks.

Cody looks up at him, biting at his bottom lip for a second. He looks like a gift to the world. Leo never really believed in gods or anything similar, but when he looks at Cody it’s always hard to cling to his existential atheism.

“I don’t know,” Cody answers honestly, “I guess my heart led me here.”

Leo nods slowly, his eyes fixed on him. “And what’s your heart telling you now?”

He can see Cody hesitate for a second. It’s the sweetest thing. How uncertainly he looks at him for that fraction of an instant, him, who’s never uncertain about anything.

Then he leans in. Leo watches him close the distance between them as though moving in slow motion. His face getting bigger by the moment, his lips getting closer, his scent getting stronger. He closes his eyes long before Cody does, surrendering to him completely. He parts his lips and lets Cody lead the kiss to where he wants it to go. And it’s a passionate place, the place they end up nesting, passionate and hot and intimate and theirs. They own it completely. They own each other completely. For the first time since this incredible, frightening, wonderful adventure began, Leo feels with utter certainty and perfect clarity that it doesn’t matter how many people he will fall in love with, it will never matter. He belongs to each and every one of them. And they belong to him. Not a fraction of him, not a portion of them. All of him, and all of them, they just belong together.

“What do you want from me tonight?” he whispers softly on Cody’s lips.

He whimpers and clings to him, pressing their noses together for a second. “Lie down,” he says then, “Let me taste you. Nothing else. It’ll be enough. Just your taste on my tongue— it’ll be enough.”

Leo nods without even thinking about it. And then he lies down.

**Author's Note:**

> This story was written for the first week of COWT #11 @ landedifandom.net  
> Prompt: M3, war


End file.
